Grace and hope found amid the destruction

Nepalese, fearing aftershocks, take shelter Sunday in makeshift tents in an open ground in Kathmandu.﻿

Nepalese, fearing aftershocks, take shelter Sunday in makeshift...

KATHMANDU, Nepal - There hasn't been a day in the two years I have lived in Nepal that I haven't thought about earthquakes. They were, in many ways, my obsession.

Kathmandu sits on a major geological fault, and the Big One has been long overdue. My husband always tried to get me to laugh it off. "Earthquakes aren't like pregnancies," he said. "They don't have due dates." Besides, we had lived through three small quakes. No big deal.

We packed "go bags," and put them downstairs, upstairs and outside in the garden. A tent, rain gear, blankets and so on. My Nepalese friends sometimes made fun of me. My friend Sasha reminded me that some things were beyond our control. If it was my karma, she would say, it was my karma.

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About 11:45 a.m. Saturday, my 10-year-old son, Lucas, and I were driving down a hill on our way to a pizza lunch at the Roadhouse Cafe in Patan, a city known for its rich cultural heritage just across the Bagmati River from Kathmandu. At first, I thought we had blown a tire, or maybe that a motorcycle had hit us from behind. Then I lost control of the car as it was tossed right and left as if by rolling waves.

Fueled by adrenaline

I lost track of time. Women ran across the road screaming. A nearby wall collapsed. A motorcyclist fell from his bike. I stopped in the middle of the road, turned off the engine and unlocked the doors. I told my son to lean over and cover his head as best he could. "It's an earthquake," I told him, and noticed my hands were shaking.

The rest of the day was fueled by adrenaline. I managed to drive home, navigating around broken bricks scattered on the roads and houses that had collapsed. My husband is away on a business trip, but our dog, a Rhodesian Ridgeback, was waiting anxiously at our gate. The house was intact. To be safe, though, I began moving emergency gear outside, as far away from it as possible. Running upstairs to fetch passports, an aftershock almost threw me to the ground. It felt like a huge tree cracking overhead.

In the evening, Lucas and I walked down our street and into a village, the oldest community of ethnic Newars in the Kathmandu Valley, a place where goats often live on the ground floor of homes and women wash their pots and their hair on the stoops.

Making our way along the town's narrow, medieval paths, we passed building after building that had collapsed. Residents, police officers and Nepal Scouts were digging through the debris with their hands, trying to rescue those who had been buried.

Others were setting up temporary shelters in any open space. Blankets and cushions were laid out in the middle of roads.

Neighbors were helping neighbors. Those with motorcycles were ferrying cheap plastic canvas for tents from shops that remained open. Many people stopped us, and asked if we needed food or water. Several invited us to spend the night with them.

This is why I love Nepal. People here help one another because they know the government often cannot. They reach out to one another, and they persevere. They open their shops, because what else can one do when the world is upside down?

Those who survived know they are lucky. Lucky that this did not happen during the frigid winter or monsoon season.

Lucky that the quake hit in daylight rather than at night, when more people would have been indoors and casualties would have been worse. Lucky that it was a Saturday, when children were not in schools, most of which were shoddily built.

Screams in darkness

Saturday night, my son and I lay in our tent pretending to be on a camping adventure as a series of rumbling aftershocks shook the ground. With each one, we listened as screams of fear echoed in the darkness. I lit a lamp and trimmed my son's fingernails. I couldn't think of anything else to do, and I couldn't sleep.

My heart aches for Nepal and what has been lost. But I am buoyed by the generous spirit of its people.

My son and I know that life here will get worse in the days and weeks ahead as fuel and water run low. But we also know we are in this together.

Donatella Lorch, a former New York Times correspondent, is a freelance writer in Nepal.